Welcome to AIE LEAD - Alex Lieberman, Tenex

Let's get a quick read of the room. If you are coming fromright here in the Big Apple, from New York, make some noise. Okay. Now, I have to say it, I assume this is the biggest group: San Francisco.

Wow, that is surprising. Austin? Okay, we got Austin. Who thinks they came from the furthest place and is in the room today? Where?

Ecuador.

Ecuador. Can anyone beat Ecuador?

New Zealand.

New Zealand? I don't think anyone's going to beat New Zealand. There we go. Well, first of all, I am so excited to welcome you all to the AI Engineer Code Summit 2025. I'm Alex Lieberman, co-founder of Morning Brew and your MC for the day.

Now, you may be wondering, why is a newsletter guy hosting an AI engineer conference? It's a great question. Well, after I left my role at Morning Brew, I asked myself one simple question, and it was, what space do I want to spend my time in for the next 20 years where I can build something consequential and spend my time with some of the smartest people I've ever met?

And the answer became obvious. I wanted to be as close to the frontier of AI as humanly possible, which is why I co-founded Tenex.co, which is an AI transformation firm helping mid-market and enterprise companies learn how to use AI within their business.

And I spend basically all of my time now with AI engineers like yourselves. I'm the only non-technical person in the business, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So, as you know, this year has been a banner year for the industry.

And I would think of today as both a look back on where we've been, as well as a tactical view of where we are headed in companies, small and large, old and new. We're going to hear from the labs.

We'll hear from unicorn AI startups. We'll hear from academics, big-time management consultants, and Fortune 50 brands. But before we do that, we have to give the brands that made this day possible their flowers. So let's go into it.

Let's give it up for Google DeepMind, today's presenting sponsor.

Love it. Keep it going for Anthropic, the platinum sponsor for the day.

And then one more round of applause for all of the gold and silver sponsors who you can meet in the expo downstairs throughout the day. One more. Let's keep it going.

Are you guys ready to do the damn thing? Let's do it.